Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Ven 15 juin 2007 15:41, Jesper Juhl a Ãcrit :
> On 15/06/07, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> You'll note I was answering to a message about what the GPL
>> intended,
>> not the strict literal reading of the GPLv2 words.
>>
>> And what the GPL authors intended is obvious from the fact it all
>> started with a printer driver and the need to change the software
>> used
>> to control this particular hardware (not some mythical other device
>> without manufacturer restrictions
>>
> But the only thing that *actually* matters is what the license text
> *says*. It doesn't matter what the authors of the license text
> intended

Judges would disagree there

> - if they intended something else than what they actually
> wrote in the license text, then they made a mistake,

Sure

> but that's their problem.

Nope. That's the problem of anyone who accepted "GPL" contributions
and wants to claim a particular intent of the contributors.

You can't say all the people who contributed to Linux in the past
support GPLv2 over GPLv3 before GPLv3 is finished and you actually ask
them. Many of them may support the way FSF clarified a use case no one
cared about before Tivo & friends made a legal "breakthrough".

> And what is actually in the license text is obviously what
> some other people (like Linus for instance) want, so for those people
> the GPLv2 is a perfectly fine license that doesn't need to be fixed
> because it says exactely what they want it to say.

And for others it's not what they want. Some like Alan will say GPLv2
is the better text, but have a different reading than Linus. Other
will take the GPLv3 with all its warts rather than let people
interpret the GPLv2 contrary to their wishes.

Please do them the courtesy to let them do their mind on their own code.

> You can talk all you want about the spirit of the license but that
> will never change the fact that it's the actual text of the license
> that matters in the end.

What matters in the end is the code authors will. If they had the same
intent as the FSF, the GPLv2 served them right a long time, but no
longer, and they can still relicense their code.

In the short term, the understanding a licensee had of the license is
as important of the licensor intent should there be a trial, but for
anything that was released before DRM was generalised I suspect a
judge would not make a literal reading of the license, but try to find
out what the licensor intentions were and if the licensee deliberately
bypassed them through technicalities.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

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